Ruby Heart

by Cristelle Comby

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BLURB:

When elderly client Doris Hargrave informs private investigator Alexandra Neve that her beloved antique ruby heart necklace has gone missing for the second time in a period of over sixty years, Alexandra knows this is no ordinary jewellery theft. The ruby heart is a family

heirloom and the only thing that connects an ailing Mrs Hargrave to her parents, who were murdered during the Holocaust.

To solve the case, Alexandra and her business partner, blind history professor Ashford Egan, must sift through obscure Holocaust documents to find out the truth. It’s that way that they learn of a secret World War II-era love affair which could hold the key to all the answers they are looking for. Meanwhile, Egan is under immense pressure from the university to quit his private investigating business, and Alexandra is afraid that a man she trusts will leave her. Again.

When Alexandra begins to receive anonymous threats and her flat is vandalised, this all becomes personal. Knowing that there is someone out there to hurt her, Alexandra vows to find that elusive ruby heart if it’s the last thing she ever does.

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Excerpt:

Being a private investigator is nothing like as glamorous or exciting as books and films make it look. Some warning of those harsh facts before I opened my own Private Investigation agency is unlikely to have deterred me, but I wish we’d been a bit more perceptive about it all beforehand. “We” is myself and my former university lecturer, Professor Ashford Egan, now a good friend and colleague.

Although you could say I stumbled into the sleuthing world quite by accident, that accident was shocking and dramatic. I’d always led a very quiet, ordinary life, until the day my best friend was murdered.

That horror stopped short my meandering, easy life and so much changed. I had no idea this would result in my very first investigation, but it did. Egan and I put a stop to a Russian criminal syndicate — with its complicit upstanding British citizens — by delving into the murky worlds of human trafficking, arms dealing, murder and arson. Sounds horribly exciting and dangerous, doesn’t it? It was… to the point where I was nearly killed, not just once but twice, and Egan was kidnapped.

However, I have since discovered that the everyday life of a PI isn’t always so intense. Most of our cases involve suspicious spouses and lost items, or even worse… lost dogs. Life isn’t always like it is in books and films, so why should the job of PI be so? We can’t afford to refuse a client, even when the case is not as appealing as a mysterious unsolved murder or a missing painting on some tropical island. Our advert in the Yellow Pages claims, completely truthfully, that we provide “Comprehensive, all-round services. We diligently seek out the truth for our clients. Discretion assured.”

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Cristelle Comby was born and raised in the French-speaking area of Switzerland, in Greater Geneva, where she still resides.

Thanks to her insatiable thirst for American and British action films and television dramas, her English is fluent.

She attributes to her origins her ever-peaceful nature and her undying love for chocolate. She has a passion for art, which also includes an interest in drawing and acting.

Ruby Heart is her second new-adult novel, and she’s hard at work on the next titles in the Neve & Egan series.

Website: http://cristelle-comby.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cristelle.comby

Twitter: http://twitter.com/Cristelle

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&field-author=Cristelle%20Comby&search-alias=digital-text&sort=relevancerank

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/CristelleComby

Paperback: http://www.amazon.com/Ruby-Heart-Neve-cases-Volume/dp/1492813435/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1381412557&sr=8-2&keywords=cristelle+comby

Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/Ruby-Heart-Neve-cases-ebook/dp/B00FRDV51I/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1381412557&sr=8-3&keywords=cristelle+comby

Outlining: Yeah!

(Guest Post by the Author)

Outlining, to writers, is the process of setting out the main events of your book and working out the plot from beginning to end. It is a plan of your novel before you begin to write. It can be from a rough single page on how the plot works, or a series of post-it notes put it into order for writing.

I personally take great care to outline the whole story before I even write the first word of a novel. It is a document that follows me throughout the entire process. It’s a very lively document: it undergoes constants edits, shrinks in parts, toughens in others.

The outline is like the skeleton of your manuscript; the words of your novel are the flesh that covers them. Outlining helps you to:

• Know what to write next. There is no staring at a blank screen wondering what to write. When you sit down to write, you know what to write about next. You won’t get so lost and end up down a blind alley with your plot.

• Change your plot or incorporate new ideas. If you plan it out, you can see ways to enhance the plot and add in new ideas. As you research, you will know where to put them in or what to change.

• Find out the problems and holes in the plot or characters. Work out how things are meant to happen before time instead of as you write. This may enable you to see gaping holes in the plot or some problem with a character.

And last, and more importantly, if you’ve carefully outlined your story, it means that you know how it ends.

I made the mistake, once, of starting out writing a story without having a clear idea of how it was going to end. Some 300 pages later, I ran out of ideas and now, several years later, that story still sits unfinished in one of my desk’s drawer.

Cristelle will be awarding a signed paperback of Ruby Heart plus a signed copy of book 1, Russian Dolls, to a randomly drawn commenter during the tour. (US ONLY)

You are encouraged to follow the tour and comment; the more you comment, the better your chances of winning. The tour dates can be found here:

http://goddessfishpromotions.blogspot.com/2013/11/virtual-book-tour-ruby-heart-by.html

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